In what has been an unusually and welcoming warm week in the District and with that comes the “What’s so bad about global warming?” or “I love global warming!” facetious remarks. The funny thing is these comments are made by both global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics.

As most Foundry readers know, the science behind global warming is anything but certain; 650 dissenting scientists took their case to the United Nations global warming conference in Poznan, Poland last December. Cutting carbon unilaterally would have negligible environmental benefits, as would any multilateral attempts. Will politicians find it acceptable to do nothing? Should we throw money at a problem knowing we can’t fix it? Sounds like the stimulus package.

Regardless of whether global warming is real, man-made, and/or catastrophic, global warming hysteria is having a number of unintended consequences:

“Last summer, doctors in Melbourne, Australia, diagnosed the first case of climate change delusion. It affected a 17-year-old who was refusing to drink water and had been admitted to the psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital.

He thought that if he took a drink, millions of people would die from the drought effects of global warming. Doctors said he’d been depressed for eight months and had “visions of apocalyptic events.

Children who are “having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters” are also booking appointments.”

And in the United States:

“23% of voters told Rasmussen Reports that it was “at least somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century.” An additional 5% said it was “very likely.”

Global warming fear-mongering has convinced Members of Congress they need to take action, but global warming has become dramatically less of a priority in the eyes of the American public than in the past few years. Unfortunately, there are still subscribers to Al Gore’s fire-and-brimstone scenarios. Skeptics still have their work cut out for them to quell global warming hysteria. Let’s hope it happens before we hear more sad stories like the above mentioned.